On a Visit to China to Help with the Beijing 2008 Olympics Web
Site

Part One: Travelogue

Contents

Introduction

Start of meeting

In early November 2003 I made a four day visit to Beijing. This
was at the invitation of the Beijing Organising Committee for the
Olympic Games (BOCOG). This was to speak at their symposium on the
design for the official web site for the 2008 Olympic games. I was
invited because of my work on accessible web sites for disabled
people and in particular expert
evidence on the Sydney 2000 Olympic web site. But this visit
was not all business, as well as the meetings with international
web experts, Olympic and government officials, technical experts
and business people, I rode around Beijing on a small folding
bicycle.

This is a technical travelogue, in the style of my my book
Net
Traveller. It combines both personal observations as a visitor
and technical observations about the trip and details of the
meetings attended. There are also notes on Research Opportunities, for a
seminar at the Australian National University (Wednesday, November
26, 2003). The 2008 Olympics has opportunities for research on
large scale, culturally sensitive, wireless, position based web
applications with video. In addition a briefing is available on
request for government and company organisations on business
opportunities with the 2008 Olympics (Brisbane Presentation added 2007).

The Symposium

Walking to the meeting

Skyline on the way back to the hotel

The first day started pleasantly when along with the other
"visiting experts" we were collected from the hotel and
walked the few hundred metres to BOCOG HQ. The hotel is outside a
metro station so we had to dodge between bicycles, motor tricycles
and electric trolley buses.

At the symposium I met the people who I had been emailing for
months and then we sat down with headphones for simultaneous
translation. The VP of BOCOG, did the welcoming speech. This made
it very clear BOCOG were very serious about their web site.
"Gather together, communicate with each other and share the
Olympic spirit".

One nice touch in the meeting was that each person had a teacup
with a lid on it to keep the tea warm. Every fifteen minutes or so
staff would refill the cups with hot water from a large flask. I
have suggested BOCOG produce Olympic 2008 branded tea cups as a
marketing gimmick.

What followed were some serious presentations from IOC
officials, academics, business and government people. The details
are in the two accompanying presentations, one on the
research/academic aspects and one on business opportunities.
But as well as the serious stuff there were very generous
banquet lunches and dinners and visits such places as the
People's Daily newspaper office.

Exploring the City

Trolley Bus

Motorised Tricycle Zipping Past

Streetscape

Different building types

The first two days of the conference were taken up with
meetings. On the final day in Beijing I had some time to . My
overseas collogues hired a taxi to see the Great Wall, but I
decided to take a less planned and more leisurely walk through
Beijing's older areas. My intention was to head in the general
direction of the Forbidden City, using the narrow back streets.
This proved a fascinating journey.

Beijing's main streets have six lanes for motor vehicles and
two lanes for bicycles . These are lined with a mixture of ultra
moder high rise buildings and older three story buildings. The most
successful of these are where the older low buildings have been
kept next to the road and there are newer building steeped
behind.

Laneways and Courtyard Houses

Barber shop and bicycle lane

Lane way

Entrance to courtyard

Markets near city centre

Away from the main six lane roads are successively narrower
roads, until there are lanes large enough for one car and a
bicycle. The lanes are lined with small shops and doorways for the
walled, courtyard houses. There are tricycle loads of briquettes
(reconstituted coal for heating), all sort of goods, bakeries and
barbers. The lane ways are a social meeting place, a place for
production and for commerce. There was also coaxial cable strung on
the electricity poles, presumably for cable TV. There was the
occasional stainless steel and white tile public toilet. On one
side of the lane may be old seemingly random dwellings and on the
other a wall and gateway to an ultra modern high rise apartment
block. Unfortunately I didn't get a good photograph of the
streets, as I felt a bit like I was taking photos in someone's
backyard.

Forbidden City

North Wall of Forbidden City

Eastern Gate to Forbidden City

South East Tower Forbidden City

As I got closer to the city centre, the character of the lane
ways suddenly changed to be straighter, better paved and more like
a tourist area. At this point someone asked me to buy something,
but in a very polite and low key way and they took my "no
thank you" with good grace. Suddenly the alleys and one story
houses gave way to skyscrapers and underground shopping malls. Then
there was the moat and walls of the forbidden city.

Buying a Folding Bicycle

Folding Bicycle Shop

My New Folding Bicycle

Tiananmen Gate

Then I headed south towards the main entrance to the city
opposite Tiananmen Square. At this point I was starting to think
about turning back because of time, but spotted a shop specializing
in folding bicycles. This seemed like divine providence as I had
not brought my own folding bicycle with me on this trip. I
was thinking of buying an even more compact bicycle and this
shop specialized in that brand. So after some pantomime
negotiation with arm waving to say "have you got the
smaller size model with gears?", "at that price if you
throw in the bicycle lock as well" and "hold on while
I stamp the warranty book and pump up the tyres" I was off
to the square on two small 16 inch wheels. The bicycle cost
about one quarter the Australian price (I probably could have
haggled it lower).

A folding bicycle turned out the ideal way to see Beijing. The
city is dead flat and so you don't need a fancy bicycle. The
small folding one kept the tourist touts away and they were too
busy laughing at me to bother trying to sell anything. Small
children stopped and stared, old men asked me how it folded. About
the only one not amused was the guard at the gate to Tiananmen
Square who, contrary to the Lonely Planet Guide to Beijing, would not let me
even walk the bicycle into the area.

Beijing's main roads have bicycle lanes the width of a two
lane highway on each side. Smaller roads still have wide cycleways.
Riding is easy, except at intersections , where you have to
negotiate the multiple lanes of traffic. There are special bicycle
traffic lights, but there is still the turning cars, buses, motor
tricycles and other bicycles to contend with. I found the best way
was to ride next to one of the slower pedal tricycles. At the very
large crossings I folded the bicycle and carried it over an
overpass or under the road.

Lost

Banner for Matrix Revolutions

Something

Folding Bicycle with the locals

After the excitement of zipping around the centre of Beijing
(the whole place is flat) I got a little carried away and got lost
on the way back to the hotel. The city is laid out as a massive
rectangular grid and so it is not difficult to navigate, but it was
an overcast winter's day and so I could not see which way was
North (good application for a bicycle mounted navigation system).
The main road have the name in both pictograph's and in
phonetic spelling, but it still was not easy to tell where I was.
On the way I passed a fascinating looking structure with bizarre
gadgets on the roof (perhaps an ancient observatory). Eventually I
found I was a few blocks east of where I needed to be and pedaled
back to the hotel in time to be collected by the car for the
airport. There were then a whole lot more people to explain the
bicycle to.

Broadband

View from the hotel window

Multi-standard power plug and modem sockets

Hotel room "Broadband" socket hidden
behind desk

From the excellent Lonely Planet Guide to Beijing, I was aware that
hotels in the city are expensive and a bit dull. The hotel was
adequate and seemed to be continually filled with UN delegations.
Ignoring all the supposed luxuries in the room I first tried to
check my e-mail. This became a "find the plug" game:
there was a helpful note on the desk saying broadband was
available, using the supplied cable, for only $US10 a day. This
didn't seem a bargain, but I couldn't get my dial-up or
mobile GPRS to work, so I tried it. The problem was there was no
sign of a socket or cable. There were two super-multi standard
power plugs (China uses the same plugs as Australia, by the way)
and two modem sockets, but no broadband. The next day one of my
collogues told me they had the same problem, asked, and found the
cable in a hidden drawer in the desk and the socket on the wall
underneath. Sure enough there they were. I just had to place my
hand under the desk to find the hidden drawer and then pull the
desk out from the wall and get down on my hands an knees to plug it
in.

The LAN connection was easy enough to make: plug in the Ethernet
cable, reboot the computer and click on a button on the default web
page. But the broadband was not very broad, with uploads at about
136 kbps (and appearing slower than my 100 kbps Transact service at
home). Also I had to retry about three times each time I tried to
collect my mail. But it did work almost well enough as a substitute
for dial up, but no good for serious on-line work. This is a point
I made in evidence to a Senate broadband inquiry the following
week in Canberra.

Getting There

The business class seat of the Boeing 777 is not so much a seat
but a collection of electrical and electronic gadgets you sit on. I
am not sure the result is entirely successful. One arm rest
contains a fold out tray table, the other a small LCD TV screen.
Folding these out is about the only manual process involved. The
foot and back rest are electrically powered by switches on the left
arm rest. These are laid out in a reasonably ergonomic way: back
control at the back, front control at the front. But there are two
front switches and I have no idea what each do. I have to bend down
to try and read the controls and they don't glow in the dark
cabin (just about everything else glows).

The controls for the audio glow and are in the right arm where
they usually are. But if you push a button the control unit pops
out on a cable and reveals itself to be a marvel of audiovisual
control. One side of the panel controls the light, calls the
attendant and operates the TV. There are also what look like video
game buttons at each end. Turn the unit over and it is a telephone,
with a credit card slot on the side. The whole unit feels so solid
you could crack Queensland nuts with it. The way the unit operates
one way as a phone one as an AV control and another as a games
controller deserves several PHD theses to be written about it (no
doubt they were).

The aircraft is not that new and no doubt all this is all old
technology to those who travel business class regularly. It is all
new to me. I couldn't even find the business class queue at the
counter and stood in an entertaining queue of tourists each with a
large "genuine" Australian woollen bed quilt. These must
be taking up most of the cargo hold of the aircraft below me. Some
bright marketing person should sell these quilts for tourists,
compacted into a miniature replica of a wool-bale.

While the hardware works, the AV system is, as usual, let down
by content. Multiple audio and video channels are good to have, but
they quickly run out of content on a long flight and you find
yourself watching the same movie over and over again. In addition
to the useful moving map display showing where we are, I was
startled on takeoff to see the view of the runway ahead projected
on screen. This was fascinating over central Australia, with the
red earth and dry riverbeds showing clearly, but boring over the
ocean. No doubt I am supposed to get bored and start calling people
on the satellite phone. But when will there be a camera as well, so
I can show people the sunset out the window?

Getting credentialed for the flight proved to be the most
difficult part of the whole trip. A physical paper ticket was
issued in Beijing and sent by courier to Canberra. While I was
registered in the airline's booking system I couldn't get
on the plane without the piece of paper from the other side of the
world. The ticket arrived 6pm the day before the flight. The ticket
had my given and surnames reversed (as is usual in China) and so
did not match my passport.

Once I had the ticket all went well. The one hour stopover in
Shanghai was unexpected. Flying in was mysterious, with fog
shrouding the city and the immense airport terminal. The airport building looks about two kilometres
long and is a looming glass wall out of the set of a science
fiction movie.

On arrival in Beijing there was an airline official holding up
my name, there to escort me through to the waiting car. They had a
walkie talky into which they reported my arrival to someone, in
they style of "the eagle has landed". It was after
midnight and I have no recollection of the drive to the hotel.